Contact center operators frequently need to contact individuals by originating calls, such as voice telephone calls or text calls, for various purposes. For example, debt collectors may need to contact debtors who are behind on their payments to discuss repayment terms or leave a message requesting the debtor contact them regarding a late payment. Telemarketing calls may be made to those individuals who have expressed an interest in a product. A customer service call may be returned to an individual requiring assistance. Those skilled in the art of contact centers will readily recognize there are various applications for which outbound calls need to be made.
In regards to contacting a party, there may be various applicable state and federal regulations that limit when such calls can be made to the party. This time frame when calls can be made is frequently described as a “calling window”, as there is a time limit defined when the calls can start and when they must end (hence, there is a time the window ‘opens’ and a time when it ‘closes’). The calling window is usually defined in the context of a given business day. For example, some federal regulations mandate that telemarketing calls cannot originate earlier than 8 a.m. or later than 9:00 p.m. Other state regulations may apply and may further limit this time. This time is defined in the context of the contacted person, that is, the local time of the called party.
In the past, contact centers could rely on determining the calling window based on the called telephone number, which was a landline number. Even when wireless (e.g., cellular service) telephone numbers were called in the past, the users were frequently located in the same geographic areas. However, wireless users are greater in number, mobile service and costs are more affordable, users have a greater degree of mobility, and many users may even move to different cities, while retaining their wireless numbers. This means that a geographic location of a user may not be correlated with their telephone number.
Because of the growing use of wireless service, SMS text has become more popular. Many regulations now treat a SMS text as a “call”, similar to a voice call, for regulatory purposes. Thus, certain regulations may limit when calls may be made to a telephone number, and these regulations encompass both voice calls and text calls. Frequently, the specialized equipment used to originate the voice calls is distinct from the specialized equipment to originate the SMS texts. Further, the specialized equipment initiates SMS texts does not manage the sending of SMS texts based on the calling window of the called party.
Providing an integrated, yet flexible solution, where different dialers can be managed for common limitations by a common component or module provides a less expensive, less complicated solution than attempting to replicate the control module for each of a voice and text dialer.
Thus, attempting to coordinate how/when these text calls and voice calls are made is difficult because the equipment today does not control different forms of dialers with respect to calling window limitations, nor does equipment today control the various dialer's call origination taking into account a plurality of address locations at which the called party may be located.
Finally, conventional equipment today does not take into account regulations from multiple states which may govern the origination of a call, because the called party may be in one of those several states. Thus, there is a need for a common control module that can control different types of dialer components in a call center, where control of call origination is controlled in a common and consistent manner taking into the different locations and associated regulations that the called party may be located in and which the call must comply with. It is with these and other limitations that the concepts and technologies are disclosed herein, in order to avoid duplicating functionality and capabilities in multiple call origination systems.